Trump blames wrong president

Bush, not Obama, freed 100 captives who are recidivists.

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, CUBA — President Donald Trump broke his White House silence on the topic of Guantanamo on Tuesday, incorrectly blaming his predecessor, Barack Obama, not former President George W. Bush, for the release of more than 100 captives who U.S. intelligence agencies consider recidivists.

Trump’s tweet, just after 7 a.m., correctly referred to an Obama-era report from the Office of the Directorate of National Intelligence as citing 122 former captive as “re-engagers.”

But it failed to note that 113 of the men Trump described in his tweet as “vicious prisoners” were released by the Bush administration.

The report, released in September, said nine captives sent to other countries by the Obama administration were confirmed to have re-engaged, the intelligence community’s term for having returned to the fight.

The so-called recidivist rate may have interested the new president because of the Pentagon’s disclosure a day earlier that a U.S. air strike in Yemen had killed a captive repatriated by the Obama administration in December 2009.

Trump’s vow to keep Guantanamo open and add new prisoners was popular during his campaign.

He had not spoken about the prison since moving to the White House

Congress in 2012 began requiring regular reports on what has become of captives released from Guantanamo.

It breaks down the report between the 532 transferred to other nations’ custody during the Bush administration and the 196 transferred by the Obama administration.